The Arab Uprisings and the European Union: In Search of a Comprehensive Strategy

Abstract

The self-immolation of Mohammed Ben Bouazizi, a university-educated street vendor, on 17 December 2010 in a Tunisian provincial city is generally seen as the symbolic trigger for the Arab uprisings. It set in motion a series of civil protests and revolutionary chain reactions against uncompromising and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) during the first half of 2011, and their after-effects continue until today. Within just a few months, governments were overthrown in Tunisia (President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on 16 January 2011), in Egypt (President Hosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011), and in Libya (Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was killed on 20 October 2011). The Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was formally replaced on 27 February 2012 and mass demonstrations took place in Iran, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and, to a lesser extent, in Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. It has been observed that the Arab Spring originated from a combination of an economic deficit, a political deficit, and a dignity deficit.1 Remarkably, the unrests occurred so suddenly that few had seen them coming.2 Reactions in Europe were initially slow and reluctant, in sharp contrast with the attention they subsequently received. The uprisings triggered a re-thinking of economic, political, and security relations of both the European Union (EU) and its Member States with the Arab world. The Arab Spring was, moreover, the first major foreign policy test for the European External Action Service (EEAS), which had only become operative in January 2011. At the peak of the Arab uprisings, the EEAS was confronted with the enormous challenge of coordinating external policies in the region without key officials being appointed or precedents to fall back on.